People love wildlife. Just ask any 6-year old. Our policies that are meant to help wildlife are some of the most important ones we work on in conservation. I’m thrilled to have Ya Wei Li – who goes by Jake – join the Innovation Center’s staff. He’s one of America’s top experts in endangered species law and policy. Here are my questions to Jake, and his answers.

When you go to a restaurant you order from a menu, see the price, and pay after you get fed. You don’t send a check the day before your reservation to pay for labor costs in the restaurant kitchen and show up the next day and get served whatever they made (or nothing if the recipe didn’t work out).

Sounds crazy right? That business model just wouldn’t work – we buy food as a good, paying for exactly what we want at a known price – not a service which is the process to get there.